Hi,
I’m not sure if anyone in the future may find this useful, but I thought I’d start this as we found it pretty tricky to find any info on Muara before we came.
My review may be pretty bleak but I welcome others to add any more info.
in the terminal we saw a tourist info, a desk for the ‘dart’ taxi company. Some small local handicraft stalls, there was a lady selling tickets to the city for 20BND (she was surrounded and we couldn’t work that out as there was supposed to be a free shuttle)
The money exchange had a long queue because of course you cannot buy BND at home.
You are not allowed to walk out of the port, a free shuttle takes you to Maura town.
We took the shuttle. There is nothing in Maura. It’s a small town with a few small grocery type stores, a money exchange and some beaches.
It has a bank also, but they don’t do money exchange.
We tried to use the local taxi app ‘Dart’ - but we couldn’t get anyone to accept our request.
we heard there was a public bus for 1BND that would take you too to capital but that would take 1 hour.
Randomly, a bus turned up from no where offering a direct trip to the capital for 15BND return. So we opted for that. It took about 30 mins.
We were given 2.5 hours free time in the capital and it was far too long. There isn’t really anything there. We could have gone over to the floating village but we actually didn’t bother (so maybe someone else can write about that below)
We ended up organising a taxi on Dart (yes we managed to get one) to come back to the shop early. It cost us 21BND
The driver was great, told us we were the first cruise this year (November!) and they only come maybe 1 to 3 times a year. This is quite evident as the area doesn’t cater for tourists. She also told us the beaches are desolate, no where for food / drinks etc
We felt the whole vibe of Brunei was weird. It’s so calm, little to no traffic, the capital felt empty and hardly any people around. Definitely a different pace to other Asian countries.
This definitely is not a port where drivers offering tours! We got propositioned by one but his starting price was really high and his car looked like a death trap. so either try hard to book something before you come or at least book the 20BND bus at the port. if you’re the cruiser who just likes to look around the immediate local area, stay on the ship.
At least we can say we’ve ticked the ‘travelled to Brunei’ box - but it’s unlikely we’d return.